So. You’ve got a great piece of content that you are excited to share with the world. Unfortunately, if your content is word-heavy, it won’t do as well. Why? Because humans are visual creatures. Using visuals in content marketing is key to attracting and keeping an audience, and here are just a few reasons why.

1. They’re Eye-Catching. People have short attention spans and are more likely to skim your content — but visuals will help catch their attention and prevent them from getting distracted or bored as quickly. Of course, the quality of your content matters too, not just that it’s visually impactful. According to a Skyword study, web content containing visuals such as images or videos perform better — on average, getting up to 94 percent more views. Twitter data scientist Douglas Mason found that tweets with images or videos receive, on average, a 35 percent or 28 percent boost in retweets, respectively.

2. They’re Memorable. From the start of your content marketing brainstorm process, you should be thinking about what kinds of photos, infographics, visuals, etc., you can create or include in your content to make it more memorable to users. Visuals are easier for users to take in and make a more lasting impression if implemented correctly. Rather than just relaying data in the most basic way, explore other avenues that allow you to condense or still present data but using a more digestible method. Infographics, pie and bar charts, and the like, are great tools to do so.

3. They Can Invoke Emotion. Tying into the memorability of visuals, when done correctly, the image you include in your content marketing can prompt an emotional response. That response will then be better ingrained in the mind of your user and they’ll more likely remember the essence of what was being conveyed to them in your content marketing.

4. They Can Be Repurposed. Visuals, specifically infographics, allow you to keep your content and data fresh. You can take data gathered from a survey and turn it into an infographic that can then be posted on your Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media channels, and it will get users’ attention and give them information. According to Sumo, infographics can actually increase website traffic by 12 percent.

So if you’re about to roll out some content marketing that’s low on visuals, you may want to rethink and revise your strategy — your marketing efforts will be better for it!

via Pexels